Globalization: concepts, impacts, and contemporary perspectives

Globalization is expected to have a few impacts on leadership. There are two different perspectives on this, however. The first of these is that some of the basic principles of leadership are timeless, and they cut across geography (Campbell, 2005). Thus, leadership is something that does not have to change much in principle, in terms of leaders having the ability to communicate, to formulate a vision, to marshal resources and to inspire and motivate their followers. Campbell is right in that leaders anywhere in the world need to have these skills, but the way in which a leader to exercise his or her leadership is going to be affected, in some cases strongly, by globalization.

Jokinen (2004) notes that complexity and diversity are much higher in the globalized business environment and that this should have significant impacts on the role of leadership. Leaders need to be able to translate message across cultures and around the world in a multinational organization. In some senses, they need to create a persona larger than life in order to remain visible to employees on the other side of the planet. Communication mechanisms are likewise going to be very different, and they need to be based on the same technologies that have facilitated globalization in the first place.

There are considerable challenges in defining a corporate culture when the organization itself is comprised of individuals operating in many different cultural milieus. Pucik (1996) identified human resources as a significant obstacle to globalization, in that people from different cultures will bring those cultures into the workplace. Creating a coherent corporate culture to supersede this is a significant leadership challenge. While leaders always need to create a corporate culture, they also must recognize that it can be a challenge to do this when there is no unifying common culture or frames of references within the organization. This is especially challenging for leaders in multinational that were multinational before the new era of globalization, because those subsidiaries might have developed their own cultures already -- it might actually be easier for companies that have only undertaken globalization recently.

As a leader in an organization that is undergoing organizational change, one of the things that I want to do is emerge from the change process with a clear sense of corporate culture that overrides some of the national cultures within the organization. I want us to present a common and united face to our customers around the world, and that means we all have to be oriented not just to the same objectives but also the same ways of doing things. For me, this is one of the most important elements of organization change.

The other thing that I feel is important is that there is global buy-in, and that can be quite challenging when people around the world have different perspectives of how the organization should behave given a set of challenges. It is important therefore to ensure that everybody understands their role in the change process, and that their voices are heard. It can be challenging, because people in different parts of the world do tend to have quite differing views on how things should be done. It is important therefore that we understand the need for change to be a collaborative process, as this is the path to getting buy-in in a globalized world. We need people all over the world to feel that they are making a healthy contribution to our success.